Hilltop Mansion in Harpers Ferry

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Mansion
Hilltop Mansion - Harpers Ferry, WV / Zach Browning

In early March of 2017, my friends and I decided we wanted to explore a historical place near our hometown of Hedgesville. Me being a history buff, I decided to look up historical places in our area that were abandoned. I stumbled across a few places, but one, in particular, peeked my interests. That place was Hilltop Mansion in Harpers Ferry. After that, I started to contact local historians and paranormal groups in the area, so I could find out more about the place. I should also mention that I intended to film an uncut documentary for my Youtube channel ZachBrowningOutdoors. I called up my friend who is also a Youtuber and told him about the mansion, and he along with a couple of other friends and my brother planned to meet at the location the following weekend.

We arrived at the location somewhere around 3 PM. It was a cold but sunny day, so in our minds, we couldn’t ask for better weather to explore in. Since the place was all boarded up due to structural damage, we crawled through a window that was broken on the hillside of the house.

Once I was in the mansion I was greeted by brilliant architecture from the earlier 1800’s. Even if you know the place was beautiful, I had a strange feeling about it that I just couldn’t shake.

In my group, there were seven of us including myself. We all decided to go upstairs and explore the upper levels of the mansion. We made it up to the 3rd floor and everyone was checking out the now destroyed rooms down this long narrow hallway. I started walking down the hallway all the way to the end and by the time I turned around, all of my friends had disappeared. I found out later that they went up to the attic without telling me, but this is the part of the story that it starts to get creepy.

I turned around noticing that I was all alone in a mansion that had formerly been a field hospital in the civil war. I started walking back down the hallway, but for some reason, I stopped at one of the rooms. The room had its floorboards ripped out and it had the infamous 666 written on the wall in graffiti. This is where my paranormal whirlwind event started.

I heard a board creak and a footstep coming from the room I was staring into. I then panicked and started fast walking down the hallway. As I got to the end of the hallway a door to one of the rooms started closing on its own. I panicked, even more, when this happened because it felt like it was telling me to leave. At this point, I start yelling for my friends, but no one answered. I got to the top of the stairs and yelled for my friends again. No one answered again and I start to go into a hardcore panic mode. I start running down the stairs, but something in me made me look over my shoulder. When I did I saw a dark shadowy figure standing at the top of the stairs. I about tripped going down the stairs, but I didn’t care since I just wanted to find my friends.

As I was making my way down the multiple flights of stairs, I felt like I was being chased. I heard bangs, footsteps, and cracks following me all the way down to the main level. It stopped when I got to the bottom of the stairs. I then stopped and collected myself, and without thinking I called my brother who was with the rest of the group. I told him I saw something and he called me a bunch of different names because he thought I was just being a baby and I was over exaggerating. I remind you, I got all of this on camera, so I did make him eat his words. As I was reviewing footage, I realized that I caught a shadow figure as I was panning the camera around the main floor.

Now it’s time for the scariest part of this story (for me at least). I finally found my friends and of course, they were making fun of me, but I really didn’t care. I lied to them saying all I heard was a bang, and they just told me it was one of them (liars). It’s hard for me to believe that since all of the stuff that was happening to me was at least 2 floors below them. Everyone was taking pictures and carrying on in the old ballroom of the house. I didn’t really care about that, so I decided to start looking at some the graffiti that was left by other people. After this, I still to this day can’t remember what happened. I blanked out and when I woke up I was at the end of a hallway that I had never been down. I was mortified to find out that I came right next to a hole in the floor with an air conditioning unit falling from the ceiling. I showed the footage to a psychic medium and she believes I was partially possessed because I lost my memory and the video clearly shows me wandering down a hallway. This wasn’t my first experience with the paranormal, but it for sure was a terrifying one.

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